Things to do in London this weekend

Here’s how Secret  7” works: seven best-selling musicians have their singles pressed on a seven-inch vinyl record, with a run of 100 each. Then artists from around the world are invited to create an original sleeve design for each one. Finally, the records go on sale for a flat rate of £50. But therein lies the secret: until you hand over the fifty smackers, you don’t know what track or whose artwork is on your chosen sleeve. It could be Aretha Franklin’s ‘One Step Ahead’, or maybe Miles Davis’s ‘Miles Runs the Voodoo Down’. There’s a chance its sleeve is a one-of-a-kind artwork made by a big-name artist. Whatever you get, your £50 will go towards Help Refugees. See all the sleeves for free at Now Gallery’s exhibition this weekend. 

Poets, authors, artists, filmmakers, dancers and musicians will be gathering to celebrate African creativity at the continent’s largest art and books festival, Aké. The fest usually takes place in Lagos, Nigeria but (like everything else) this year it’s going online, which in ‘positive-spin’ 2020 language means it’s going global. Responding to the anti-racism movements that have taken off across the globe, this year’s theme is ‘Africa Time’, with panel discussions, exhibitions and workshops exploring Black excellence, resilience and resistance. The programme features some of the most exciting Black authors putting pen to paper right now, including Zimbabwe’s Petina Gappah, Tayari Jones, winner of the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction and Booker Prize-winner Marlon James. As well as the readings, there’ll be digi gigs from Afrofunk pioneer Blackman Akeeb Kareem and Malian vocalist Fatoumata Diawara. As festival founder Lola Shoneyin says: ‘The magnitude of recent world events cannot be ignored. It may have come later than hoped for, but, for the children of Africa everywhere, this is African Time.’

The Royal Ballet is back on the Royal Opera House stage with new show, er, ‘Back on Stage’, a full-on extravaganza, with sumptuous design and the return of the full ballet – plus orchestra – barrelling through an evening of its greatest hits, from Fredrick Ashton to Hofesh Shechter. Watch it online for just £16 – a fraction of a usual ROH ticket. 

London’s bars are facing their most challenging year, so think of this Cocktail Week as Eat Out to Help Out, but for boozers. A £15 digital pass entitles you to £6 cocktails in some very swish-looking places throughout October (for perspective, a mezcal cocktail at Dalston’s Hacha would normally set you back £10.50). 

It stings the heart, this installation by Edmund de Waal. The ceramicist and author has lined the walls of his room within a room in the British Museum with books by writers in exile. Albert Camus’s ‘Exile and the Kingdom’, Jean Rhys’s ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’, Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’. Shelf after shelf of stories written by people far from home, thinking of home.

If anyone really has managed to dance themselves right out the womb, it’s probably Michael Clark. This show is a comprehensive sweep through the maverick dancer and coreographer’s career which he spent mashing up post-punk with classical ballet. Head along for its opening weekend to see Clark’s original style through film, photography, paintings and sculptures, alongside his legendary collaborations with cult icons like Leigh Bowery, Sarah Lucas, The Fall and Wolfgang Tillmans. 

All right, so the hottest months are behind us, but there’s still ample opportunity for alfresco feasting. Whether you’re in the mood for spaghetti in the sun or schnitzel by starlight, our big ol' list should have you covered. Just be sure to book ahead, yeah? A lot of people want to eat, drink, and be merry outside at the minute.

Spooky season is upon us and to mark the occasion you can watch scary films at Forbidden Forest Cinema, an ‘eerie woodland’ installation from Pop-Up Screens next to Peckham’s Bussey Building. This weekend watch ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’, ‘The Lost Boys’, ‘The Blair Witch Project’, or ‘Us’ amongst some imported foliage. Wees in the trees? 

Great news: the Southbank Centre is reopening! Less great news: you can’t go in! Instead, the shows in its Inside Out season of music and literature will broadcast the Royal Festival Hall to the wider world, with most viewable by purchasing a ticket to watch a live stream, and a number of the concerts aired on BBC Radio 3. This weekend watch talks with Dawn French and Arundhati Roy. Or, listen to concerts from the London Sinfonietta and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. 

Adam Kay – musical comedian and half of the Amateur Transplants – wrote a hugely successful book about the NHS and being a junior doctor. His live version of the show was due to run in the West End earlier this year, but got derailed for ‘obvious reasons’. However, it has the distinction of being the piece that will formally reopen Theatreland to audience, with its three week socially distanced run serving as a trial for a wider reopening of the Apollo Theatre.

The Cause’s Costa Del Tottenham is offering two ticket options in light of the new Tier Two restrictions. Same Household tickets will be allocated indoors and Mixed Household tables will be outdoors with full cover for rain (sitting outside with people not in your household is still allowed). This weekend there’s a plethora of DJs to listen to including Dr Banana back to back with Alec Falconer, Melvo Baptiste Mr Doris, and breakbeat hardcore group 2 Bad Mice. 

The Royal Opera House is back with a slightly different autumn season than usual. The latest performance in these New Normal times is ‘4/4’ - an evening of specially-curated opera with celebrated directors like Adele Thomas, Deborah Warner, Richard Jones and Antony McDonald, paired with composers, conductors, singers and small ensembles of musicians in bold works by Handel, Gruber, Barber and Britten. It will be available to watch for £16 via the ROH Stream player until Nov 16. 

Bit late for the Summer Exhibition, isn’t it? Yes, but calling the Royal Academy’s annual open-submission mega-show the ‘Autumn Exhibition’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it. So it’s the same thing we get every summer – floor-to-ceiling art by greats and unknowns alike, plus all those little stickers on the walls – only a few months later thanks to the year that is 2020. 

Bodies flailing through the air, mythical creatures rushing by in a blur, golden rays of light and mounds and mounds of flesh: Titian’s poesie series is wild, dramatic, violent, and very, very sensual. 

London is great during the summer, but it’s during the autumn months that the city is at its most beautiful. Get out and about  as the greenery of the summer months starts to turn and the trees take on warm red, orange and yellow hues. These are the most beautiful London parks for a colourful autumn walk.

One of Bruce Nauman’s works is called ‘Clown Torture’. That’s all you need to know about the pivotal, ultra-influential American artist, who’s finally getting a seriously big Tate show this autumn. Head along for its first weekend to soo neons, installations, films: this show is going to have it all. Plus the aforementioned clown torture.

Not to be confused with the manicured Walthamstow Wetlands, this outdoor art exhibition is taking place in the reedbeds of the London Wetlands Centre in Barnes. The one with the otters. To mark its twentieth anniversary, the centre is carefully placing sculptures and sound installations among the watery habitat that you can view from a distance. Look out for Alec Stevens’s ‘That Sinking Feeling’, little houses that protrude from the lagoon, reminding us of rising water levels, while the ducks swim around them without a care in the world. 

The Last Five Years’ reopens a socially-distanced Southwark Playhouse. Molly Lynch and Oli Higginson will reprise their roles.

Trying to find a good Oktoberfest is just chasing a luftschloß (that’s German for an unrealistic dream). But if you’re going to go for it, try and find one that at least vaguely resembles a Munich beer hall, like Bierschenke in Liverpool Street. It’s been at it for a decade, serving up traditional Bavarian wurst to thousands of Londoners every year. And unlike a lot of other soulless stein-peddlers, entry for this one is free.

London’s streets are haunted by vile ghosts. Everywhere you walk, there are statues of Britons who conquered the world and pillaged its nations looming over you. And in front of Buckingham Palace stands the Victoria Memorial, an ornate, lavish celebration of Queen Vic and her imperial achievements. Now a version of it haunts the Turbine Hall. But American artist Kara Walker’s bubbling fountain isn’t a celebration of the British Empire, it’s a vicious, angry, fearsome attack on it.

Care to enter a golden cave flanked by two priapic corncob pillars? Good, that’s exactly how you’ll experience artist Trulee Hall’s fun house of the ‘erotic grotesque’ installation at the Zabludowicz Collection. Here are just a few things you’ll find at Hall’s solo exhibition: glory holes, discordant music, naked bodies, flayed pop culture references, nightmarish serpents and a psychosexual opera exploring gender and sexuality. It’s a mix of video and sculpture and it’s all deeply weird. So you have to go. 

Clear all the images of a naked Sting from your mind, because the British Museum’s new exhibition is all about uncovering the truth behind the beautiful, esoteric Eastern philosophical movement. Expect centuries’ worth of stunning objects, prints and paintings.

Autumn is here! Which means plump orange orbs are starting to pop up around London. Yep, pumpkin season is upon us, but these spherical squashes aren’t just for Halloween. Achieve your squash goals this year by spending the weekend picking them at some of our favourite veggie picking spots. 

Missing the days of crowded, unpredictable nights in the pub? Make an appointment at Dellasposa Gallery to see this exhibition of artworks by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Nina Hamnett and Eduardo Paolozzi, who were all regulars at the infamous Soho drinking den The Colony Rooms. It’s a chance to get a flavour of the Colony Room days, safe from the risk of a punch in the face from a drunken Francis B. Find out more here. 

Under a filthy plastic tarp, Kai Althoff tells his impenetrable stories. The German painter has lowered the Whitechapel’s ceiling and littered it with leaves and debris. You walk under this dirty, constricting canopy to pore over his mystical, romantic, violent works. 

Plans for a nine-foot mural of George Michael’s face on Kingsbury Road have (understandably) dominated its news coverage, but there’s more to the Brent Biennial than his beautiful bouffant. The borough’s libraries, parks, public spaces and coin-op launderettes are opening up to esoteric installations and anthropolitical art projects that will dissect the history of Brent. Artists David Blandy, Imran Qureshi and Barby Asante will all be taking part. If someone offers you a DVD, don’t turn it down – it might be the work of artist Adam Farah, who has used his commission to burn short films and reflections on to discs he will hand out to the public for free. Or it might be a pirate copy of ‘Mall Cop’. That’s a risk you’ll have to take. Read the full programme here. 

The Imperial War Museum has reopened with a startling installation from Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei. The show sees life-size diagrams of explosive devices – from WWI hand grenades to nuclear missiles – cover the IWM’s floor and stairs. It’s cold and implacable, eerie and weirdly beautiful. 

South London music venue Brixton Jamm has renovated its outdoor space with spaced-out booths and picnic benches. On Friday night head along to listen to DJs including Ross From Friends. On Saturday, there’s a free-entry Drum & Bass barbeque, plus sets from Harrison BDP, DELASFLORES. On Sunday, Notting Hill Carnival favourites Channel One are back for another of their Sunday socials. 

Markets are woven into the fabric of London life and make for the perfect weekend activity. From foodie stands to stalls filled with flowers, these are the ones worth making a beeline for. 

Drawing, for Toyin Ojih Odutola, is a form of storytelling. These new works, exhibited around the 90-metre sweep of the Barbican Curve, form part of an epic series relaying an imagined ancient myth. The artist uses pencil, pastel, ballpoint pen and charcoal to create the mega-sized portraits that are as delicate as they are beautiful. 

The folk behind east London craft brewery Truman’s have heard our call and have opened what they’re calling ‘the biggest socially distanced pub and garden’ to London. The brewery has transformed a 35,000-square-foot venue in Walthamstow into Truman’s Social Club, which allows plenty of space for social distancing. There’s a catch: you’ll have to pre-book to get a seat. 

This show is full of those celebrities. Stacks of soup cans, piles of boxes of Brillo pads, dozens of Marilyns, repeated Elvises. You already know these works by Andy Warhol: you can’t not, they’re inescapable. But what this show really tries to do is present Warhol as something more than just headlines and bright colours. Tickets are still available for this Sunday. Grab ’em quick. 

As lockdown eases, the National Trust and its glorious green spaces are springing back to life. Some of the Trust’s outdoor spaces are now open for you to get a healthy dose of the green stuff, but many have a new pre-booking system in place to ensure crowds are restricted and social distancing can be upheld, so do check if spaces are sold out before visiting.